this moment

California poppy blooming in Massachusetts

I have never been this kind of tired -- too tired to think well enough to write. The worst kind of tired imaginable to me.

I watch the progression – my husband gets more and more exhausted as the week goes on and he continues to take on the brunt of the teething nights. At dinner, pasta with butter, (our farm box of vegetables rotting in the frig), he looks haggered, dark bags form under his eyes. Later, I retrieve him from our 7-year-old's room where he's fallen asleep doing bedtime and take his hand to lead him back downstairs where he squints in the harsh light.

For over a week now, the two of us whisper the same thing to each other before we go to bed, “White sand, turquoise water.” We've been trying to dream about a little cabana on the beach for just us. A hammock and a drink with an umbrella. Somewhere out on the horizon, the orange sail of a catamaran still visible in the setting sun. We just want to dream it, for godssake. So far, nothing. We are awake every two hours; we are rigid minds of havetos and can'ts; we are wasted.

Instead, last night just before dawn, I dreamed of Monterey. I had to say goodbye to everyone again. I kept going back and forth among my friends, unable to break away.

Mike is sprawled, eyes closed, on the couch now, and before him the detritus of the day maps our path: a plastic recycling truck, its back hanging open like a yellow wagging tongue; a teddy bear Isaac got as a gift when he was one leaning on its face in the corner; a remote control car that hasn't worked for at least a decade which my mother-in-law insisted we bring home with us from her basement; a container of blocks, mostly empty; a hundred wooden blocks strewn the length of the living room; a dozen board books, their spines gouged with teeth marks.

There is no clever ending to this story. There is no sharply creative metaphor. It is just the story of a family holding on, just holding on.